Responses to climate change – insights and limitations from herbaceous plant model systems

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 1 of this Preprint. You must log in to post a comment. There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 1 of this Preprint. Add a Comment You must log in to post a comment. Comments There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. Herbaceous plant species have been the focus of extensive, long-term research into climate change responses, but there has been little effort to synthesize results and predicted outlooks from different model species. We summarize research on climate change responses for eight intensively-studied herbaceous plant species. We establish generalities across species, examine limitations, interrogate biases, and propose a path forward. All six forb species exhibit reduced fitness, maladaptation, and/or population declines in at least part of the range. Plasticity alone is likely not sufficient to allow adjustment to shifting climates. Most model species also have spatially-restricted dispersal that may limit genetic and evolutionary rescue. These results are surprising, given that these species are widespread, span large elevation ranges, and generally have substantial levels of genetic and phenotypic variation. The focal species have diverse life histories, reproductive strategies, and habitats, but most are native to North America. Thus, these species may poorly represent rare species, habitat specialists, or species endemic to other parts of the world. We encourage researchers to design demographic and field experiments that evaluate plant traits and fitness in contemporary and potential future conditions across the full life cycle, and that consider the effects of climate change on biotic interactions. https://doi.org/10.32942/X22K84 Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Plant Sciences global change biology, adaptation, acclimation, dispersal limitation, Andropogon gerardii, Arabidopsis thaliana, Boechera stricta, Clarkia xantiana, Mimulus cardinalis, Mimulus guttatus, Ipomopsis aggregata, Panicum virgatum Published: 2025-03-24 22:13 Last Updated: 2025-03-24 22:13 CC BY Attribution 4.0 International Conflict of interest statement: None Data and Code Availability Statement: Not applicable Language: English